The Philippine population is expected to reach 110.8 million by the end of 2021, the Commission on Population and Development (PopCom) said.
PopCom said it could further grow due to unplanned pregnancies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to PopCom Executive Director Juan Antonio Perez III, this 2021 population projection is higher than the previous 109.4 million at the onset of 2020.
Perez noted that the University of the Philippines Population Institute (UPPI) also projected up to 750,000 “quarantine babies” would be born this year.
“However, since the GCQ (general community quarantine) is affecting only around one-third of the country, we believe about 250,000 might be added to our crude birth rate that would bring our population to 111.1 million,” Perez said.
Despite the projected increase in the population, Perez said the PopCom is expecting Filipino families “to grow smaller to only four to five members per family.”
Philippine population to reach 110.8 million in 2021 – PopCom
According to the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), the population rate would decrease to 1.31 percent in 2021 from 1.68 percent in 2016, Perez said.
“We have seen a significant decline. This is because Filipinos are choosing to have smaller families, to have fewer children and therefore fertility is slowly declining,” he explained.
Meanwhile, the PopCom chief said the working-age (15 to 64 years old) would have the most notable increase this year, to reach 71.2 million by end-2021.
Perez said this population group would be at least 64.15 percent of the entire Philippine population, meaning the country “needs to create at least half a million new jobs in the middle of this pandemic.”
The Commission added that for the first time, the number of senior citizens would exceed 10 million this year.
Filipinos within 0 to 14 years old, which will make up 29.83 percent of the population, are also projected to grow by 475,543, PopCom added.
“Despite these numbers our country still has one of the highest population growth rates in the ASEAN. There are still lingering issues that we all have to address as we usher in the new decade of 2021 to 2030,” Perez pointed out.
Both the UPPI and PopCom also showed that teenage pregnancies would increase by about 21 percent this year.
“We still have a lot of work ahead of us with regards to population management and family planning. It would still take a comprehensive approach that links government efforts to non-government organizations and the private sector — one that allows program like family planning to reach every community in all 42,000 barangays nationwide,” Perez said.